Question Resurrecting a an Intel i9 9900 CPU.

Sep 8, 2022
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I have an Intel i9 9900 CPU that I believe is faulty. When I attempt to use it in my Asus Strix-Z390E motherboard neither of the Channel A DIMM slots are recognised. The CPU appears to work fine if I use only the Channel B DIMM slots on the MOB. I have tested the MOB with a Celeron G4900 CPU and that appears to recognise both Channel A and B including dual channel mode, thus my conclusion that the problem lies within the CPU. When I inherited the PC I noticed that the cooler had been clamped down very tightly onto the CPU and I am aware that this situation can cause damage to either the CPU or MOB.

Now that I have isolated the fault to the CPU I am wondering if I might be able to reverse the damage. Looking at this CPU it appears to me that it is built up with the body of the chip bonded to a pcb which contains the 1151 pads for the connection to the LGA socket on the MOB. In the central zone of the pcb there are many surface mounted resistors and capacitors which are surrounded by the connection pads. It occurs to me that the most likely points of failure due to excessive tightening and flexing of the pcb, would be the soldered connections to these surface mounted components which might crack, rather than damage to the metal encapsulated CPU chip itself.

My question is, if I flood the surface mounted components with a suitable flux and heat this area with a solder rework blower how likely am I to succeed in bringing the defective circuits back to life? Has anyone done this?
 
Last edited:
Sep 8, 2022
2
0
10
A cracked solder connection can be pretty much impossible to see, and I guess that’s what I’m pinning my hopes on. If the IMC does not use any of those SMD components then I will call it quits, but at this point I have no idea about that.